1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to a method for preventing the interception of data as it is sent from a computer system to a web site. More specifically, the present invention presents a technique for preventing the interception of data by a monitoring program as it is sent from a web browser to a web site, and a method for overcoming the same.
2. Description of the Related Art
Today, web sites on the Internet allow visitors to purchase a variety of goods and services. Often, the process of purchasing these goods and services consists of a customer using a web browser to select a specific product and any options available with the product from a merchant's web site. Once the product is selected, the customer enters a credit card number to pay for the product, and the product is subsequently shipped to the customer or the service provided.
Lately, a number of companies have begun offering automated comparison-shopping computer programs that can “supplement” a customer's shopping experience on the Internet. Comparison-shopping programs, such as CometCursor and SideStep, can monitor which goods or services a customer selects from a merchant's web site. Once the customer finally selects a good or service, these comparison-shopping programs first determine the identity of the good or service selected by the customer, then the programs automatically contact other web sites which sell comparable goods or services in an effort to find a better bargain for the customer. These programs ultimately collect data from the other merchants and report their findings to the customer. The customer is then free to continue his purchase of the good or service from the original merchant or to purchase comparable goods or services from one of the other web sites discovered by the comparison-shopping program.
For example, a customer in need of an airline ticket may navigate to QuickFlight Airlines, Inc.'s web site (www.quickflight.com) to purchase a ticket for use on QuickFlight. Once the customer navigates to QuickFlight's web site, the customer specifies the location, date, and time of the departure flight, as well as the destination location using a web browser. For a round trip, the customer specifies the same information for a return flight. After the customer specifies this information, the customer directs the browser to submit the information to the QuickFlight web site so that flights meeting the customer's specifications can be returned to the customer for review. At this point in the process, a program previously installed on the customer's computer named Flight Data Snooper intercepts the HTML-formatted data being transmitted to the QuickFlight web site by the customer. Flight Data Snooper has been programmed to extract the flight information previously entered by the customer from the data, namely, the departure and destination cities, as well as the corresponding dates and times. Once this data is extracted, Flight Data Snooper proceeds to query other airline and travel web sites to get availability and price information for similar flights. When this information is returned, Flight Data Snooper reformats and presents the information to the customer along with the information returned to the customer by QuickFlight's web site.
Alternatively, when a customer is visiting another travel web site, Flight Data Snooper may attempt to programmatically retrieve flight options and fares from QuickFlight's web site that correspond to flight information entered by the customer at the other travel web site. Flight Data Snooper then takes these flight options and fares, along with any others it was able to collect from other travel-related web sites, and presents them to the customer.
While Flight Data Snooper may provide a service to the customer by allowing a wide search to be conducted automatically, its operation can interfere with the customer's use of the QuickFlight web site. For instance, the traffic generated by Flight Data Snooper can slow the response time of the QuickFlight site, thereby giving the customer the false impression that the QuickFlight web site is slow to respond to the customer's request. In addition, if Flight Data Snooper attempts to automatically retrieve price quotes and availability information from the QuickFlight web site, there is always the risk that Flight Data Snooper could misinterpret the information supplied to it by QuickFlight and pass along inaccurate information to the customer in the name of QuickFlight. In addition, Flight Data Snooper's mechanical, autonomous operation may generate excessive queries to QuickFlight's site, thereby slowing the QuickFlight's site as a whole.
Thus, the need exists to prevent programs like Flight Data Snooper from surreptitiously gathering information and using it to obtain other offers for what it believes are comparable goods and services.